You are setting a high bar indeed. Hesitation can cost you your life. You literally have seconds or fractions of seconds to react. Have you ever been in a life or death situation?
Police are human beings who have the same survival instincts you have. They are placed in dangerous situations against adversaries who can be well-armed and unpredictable. You can be shot dead during a routine traffic stop.
The overwhelming majority of police never fire their weapon in the line of duty. Yes, there are bad cops and cops that don't exercise the proper judgment. But just as there is death in combat and collateral damage due to friendly fire, you cannot expect cops to be mistake free in life threatening situations. The mistakes of a rare few should not be extrapolated to the many good cops who are risking their lives daily.
We should prosecute bad cops and hold them accountable. But we shouldn't fall into the meme that there is widespread lawless on the part of the police. There has been a rise of SWAT teams and the militarization of the police, but is this the result of the perceived threat or an initiative on their part unrelated to reality? We do know that violent crime has been decreasing nationally.
I find it ironic that Obama is citing the rule of law when he just legalized 5 million lawbreakers.
” You are setting a high bar indeed.
Hesitation can cost you your life. You
literally have seconds or fractions of
seconds to react. Have you ever been in a
life or death situation?”
I’ve been on both sides of a gun greeting. Waiting prevented a tragic event both times. And my only bar is that the fear needs to be reasonable. There are a lot of shootings, like the Dorner hunt, that aren’t reasonable and didn’t get punished.
Whatever cops want, people will only put up with so many mistakes before returning fire, figuratively and literally. That is the plain blunt truth.